SOUTH DEERFIELD — Over the last year, an energy storage solutions research and development company focusing on supercapacitors has been settling into its new facility off of Routes 5 and 10.

Florrent, originally based out of a laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, moved its operations and 12-person team to 10 Greenfield Road over the last few years. After receiving the go-ahead from the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals in August 2023, the company began manufacturing activated carbon in 2024.

Activated carbon is similar to what might be found in a water filter and florrent patented its process in 2024. The process sees it take biomass — in florrent’s case, employees typically use pecan shells because they are easily sourced in the United States, rather than coconut husks from the Philippines — and then heat it up in the presence of chemical agents to “activate” it, which can then be used in the development of supercapacitors, according to Alex Nichols, co-founder and chief technology officer, and Ryan Tarrant, process engineering manager.

“For a lot of people, [activated carbon] is showing up in their everyday lives more and more, but not necessarily in the application we are making it for,” Tarrant said. “We’re working on developing activated carbon for electrical energy storage, in particular, supercapacitors.”

Nichols said florrent’s process is a novel idea, and their focus is on creating activated carbon and working with other companies to actually develop the supercapacitors.

“To the best of our knowledge — and the supercapacitor industry is small and we have plenty of connects within it — florrent is the first company to scale up a process like ours,” Nichols said.

Nichols and Tarrant said supercapacitors can “deliver short bursts of power very efficiently.” An example where that could be helpful, Tarrant said, is in emergency power systems at facilities like manufacturing plants or hospitals.

If the power goes out, it could be a few seconds to a minute before the emergency system kicks in and stabilizes itself to generate enough electricity to power equipment. A supercapacitor system, Tarrant said, could have a smaller footprint, is less prone to fire or temperature changes, and could “immediately provide full power and bridge that gap.”

“This provides the same power in a smaller footprint,” he said, “as well as the additional advantages, just because it’s more tailored for that kind of power.”

The process also has roots in sustainability because while it does generate carbon dioxide as a waste product, natural decomposition of biomass like pecan shells would also create CO2 anyway.

“If you just let biomass lie in a field … based on microbial action it would all end up in the atmosphere as CO2. We’re able to sequester a significant amount of that carbon in a solid mineral form,” Nichols said, with Tarrant adding they are “sinking [carbon] into a product rather than putting it back into the environment.”

Expansion is on the horizon, too, at least in the current space the company rents, as florrent this winter received a $402,175 grant to build out its pilot-scale facility at 10 Greenfield Road. This expansion will see the addition of more equipment for the process it uses to create activated carbon.

Expansion plans

The grant, announced in January, comes from the Center for Advanced Manufacturing at the MassTech Collaborative. Two other companies, Apparel Robotics in Boston and Fleet Robotics in Somerville, also received money, as the state seeks to bridge the “gap between innovation and commercialization in hardtech manufacturing,” according to the grant announcement.

“These three companies exemplify the kind of innovation and collaboration that makes the Massachusetts manufacturing ecosystem so strong,” Center for Advanced Manufacturing Director Lily Fitzgerald said in a statement. “[The Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative] has invested over $100 million in Massachusetts over its tenure. These investments help companies transition technologies out of the production floor and into the ecosystem, create new jobs and opportunities, and enable innovation to solve tough, real-world challenges.”

For florrent, the money allows the company to hire two to three additional staff members in South Deerfield, expand its production capabilities and refine its process, while continuing to grow.

“We probably made a 20-fold scale-up just by moving off campus and we’re getting to make an additional 50-fold scale-up in our next build out,” Tarrant noted. “We’re currently in the process of ordering equipment for the next scale of system, which will be located in the same space, so we’re staying in South Deerfield.”

If all goes well in the pilot phase, Nichols said there is more space available to lease at its current location.

“There’s plenty of space here in South Deerfield for us to continue growing,” he said.

More details about florrent can be found at florrent.com.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.